I had to let Bunny out of the room eventually and Magpie wanted nothing more than to stalk and attack her again. I started reading online about “redirected aggression” in cats, which completely fit Magpie’s behavior. I suspect that Magpie saw a cat or other threat outdoors and happened to be beside Bunny and associate the threat with her.

I was able to confine Bunny with a litterbox and food in my office. She eventually escaped because the door does not close properly (#victorianhouseproblems). We have been keeping the door closed by using a miniature air jack but must have done it incorrectly once so she got out. She seemed pretty confident wandering the house, but Magpie was still more aggressive than we liked, so we put Magpie in the office, hoping that the litterbox scents would help her re-associate Bunny as a fellow household member. For the first 24-48 hours after release, all seemed well – Magpie and Carlos were getting along (third cat Carlos was at first very wary of both Bunny and Magpie) and Bunny even joined them a few times for snuggles.

Unfortunately, Bunny still has memories of the event and seems to get startled and hiss at Magpie. I think the problem is compounded because my jerk neighbors continue to set off fireworks at all hours of the day and night (to the extent that I’m sympathetic with defunding police, it’s because the ones in my town seem to completely fail to enforce anything – I cannot even count the number of times I’ve seen someone run a stop sign in front of a police car!). Anyway, Magpie does not appreciate being hissed at, and she especially does not apreciate that Bunny hisses and then runs away. The running seems to triger Magpie’s predator instinct and Magpie will corner her and swat at her face. She has also become aggressive and territorial, chasing Bunny off our bed a few times when both used to lie happily with us every morning after breakfast. (She lets Carlos on the bed, but Carlos isn’t as rewarding a companion because he doesn’t particularly like to be petted.)

I had really hoped the problem was behind us after a seemingly succesful reintroduction, but Bunny seems to have regressed and has taken up residence in a closet for the past 48 hours. I am trying to reset the dynamic again by placing Bunny in a suite of rooms that is well-suited to acclimate cats to one another. There is a sunroom with a window looking into the interior hallway so they can see each other and interact through glass, and the room connects via a larger room and a closet to D’s office, so the cat getting acclimated can spend time with us in a room we are in frequently on weekdays. I think it’s better to have her in the office with me so that she can rediscover her interest in human interaction (I am holed up despite the beautiful weather catching up on work and finishing my law school applications, just taking a break to write this because it is so on my mind as Carlos and Bunny cuddle next to me in a cat bed that all three of them used to crowd into) and plan to fix the door next week.

I really had no idea that cats could do this. I have no idea how long this will continue and it’s very sad because these two were fast friends for so long.

Dave decided to “experiment” with seeing whether the cats would go into carriers before our appointment with Alley Cat Rescue (a local charity providing ultra-low-cost spay/neuter services, that also lends traps for people like us to use to capture the cats), and ended up bringing home two kittens. I could have stopped David from walking into a nest of kittens with a cat carrier, but I guess a part of me wanted to rescue kittens, too, so when he called me saying, “I have two kittens in the carrier, what do I do?” I told him we could quarantine them in our downstairs bathroom.

It would have been great to know about Alley Cat Rescue BEFORE Dave bought 2 random kittens into our house, since we ended up shelling out close to $300 to get them tested for rabies, leukemia, etc. at our local vet’s office. (These tests would have been included in the spay package with Alley Cat Rescue.) Our vet is a kind person and gave us a small discount, but we could definitely have picked a cheaper hobby.

Alley Cat rescue is a small nonprofit in Bladensburg, Maryland that takes convoys of cats to a low-cost spay/neuter provider. They take a convoy every few weeks and you need to make a reservation for your cat, then trap them the night before (or a few days before, I guess, if you don’t mind having them in a cage for awhile). You can immediately release the male cats, but they advise that you monitor the females in a cage for a day or two afterwards to ensure there are no infections.

I was hoping to piggyback on a local rescue in order to post the kittens on Petfinder. I assumed that these groups knew more than I did about vetting adopters. I suspected, but hadn’t confirmed, that local rescues were pretty much totally booked, and wouldn’t be able to provide foster care for additional cats, but I was surprised to learn that they wouldn’t do courtesy listings on Petfinder for our kittens. I’m looking into Petfinder’s procedures to allow individuals to list – it looks like you may have to register with them as a rescue yourself – for future reference, but I don’t have any information on this to share.

Surprisingly, Alley Cat Rescue suggested that we post the kittens to Craigslist, and gave us some tips about how to do it safely (they gave us their reference check form and we used it to vet folks who responded to our ad). A volunteer with PAW Rescue in Greenbelt saw our ad and reached out with safety concerns about CraigsList, and PAW ultimately would have let us list our kittens with them if we committed to attending adoption fairs throughout the area on Saturdays with the kittens, which we didn’t think was a good option since they were pretty shy when we got them. By the time they were calm enough for a Saturday rescue fair to have been an option, one was spoken for on Craigslist and a friend asked for the second one.

I ended up taking one kitten to the Baltimore Humane Society for their $90 spay/neuter package, because my friend adopting the kitten lived in Baltimore, which was the only area humane society that would do low-cost spay/neuter for people who lived outside of their geographic area. There were only two slots available during the month at Alley Cat Rescue, so we gave priority to the kitten that was being rehomed locally, and to their mother, who we were happily able to trap – poor “Dark Mama,” as we call her, was pregnant AGAIN. This would have been at least her third litter that summer, so we got her fixed immediately.

We were able to gradually trap the rest of the colony in time for their appointments with Alley Cat Rescue. I can see where this can be tricky, if you catch a cat that’s been spayed already, etc instead of the one you are targeting, but we were lucky – the two that had already been fixed steered clear of the traps and we were able to catch “Chinstrap” and “Soulpatch” the night before the next clinic at ACR.

If you are considering bringing a feral cat into your home, I highly recommend identifying local rescue groups first in case you can negotiate a discount on vet services somewhere. It’s important to note that the free clinics will often only happen once a month, and high-volume low-cost spay-neuter clinics will often have wait times of up to 3 weeks. The Baltimore Humane Society was the only same-week option I found for less than $100.

Spay Now in Laurel also does low-cost spay/neuter packages ($40 at last check) but they book out several weeks/months in advance.I believe there are also options in DC proper for residents, but I’m not sure, and I don’t know what is available in northern Virginia.

Hope to come back to this post and add some photos of kittens eventually.